The Obama administration has chosen to ignore the First Amendment and add insult to injury for Catholics whose schools, hospitals and charities help make this nation great. Now the real fight begins.

Religious leaders had feared the worst from Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her Department of Health and Human Services, which since September has been considering whether to exempt Catholic and other religious employers from a regulation mandating insurance coverage for sterilization and contraceptives, including some that cause abortion.

But on Friday afternoon, Sebelius announced the bad news in the most offensive way possible. Refusing even the smallest compromise with religious employers, she simply gave them an extra year to comply with the law.

This decision was made after very careful consideration, including the important concerns some have raised about religious liberty, Sebelius wrote in a brief statement from HHS. I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services.

Her attempt to appear compromising is absurd. What balance could Sebelius possibly mean? The HHS regulations include the narrowest exemption for religious employers ever proposed by the federal government, and even more restrictive than such exemptions in most states.

There is a growing number of people who pray and fast daily for this nation. Several of those people have been asking the Blessed Mother of Jesus to intercede with the following prayer: “O Blessed Virgin, Mother of the Savior, scatter the forces of evil so they are not engrossed in darkness but can come to light.”

Even the ‘cafeteria Catholics’ are beginning to SEE where this administration wants to take us.

This along with FOCA is the Liberal plan to seize the Catholic Hospitals. 25% of all hospital beds in America are in buildings with the word Saint on them. The Bishops will close them before capitulating to abortion. Obama will call this a “crisis”.

Far too many Catholic bishops and those among the elite Catholic intelligentsia have been playing with Marxist Liberation Theology snake for decades. Now, they are surprised that the snake has bitten them?

What about other religions/denominations? Where were they then? Where are they now?

50 percent of Catholics (Catholics make up about 22 percent of the U.S. population.) approve of his presidency, down from 67percent in his first six months in office.

DOWN 17 POINTS

among non-Catholic Christians, who make up 55 percent of the U.S. population, had fallen from 58percent to 43 percent.

DOWN 15 POINTS

Mormon respondents, who represent about two percent of U.S. adults, fell from 43 percent to 26 percent

DOWN 17 POINTS

About 78 percent of Muslim respondents approved of the Obama presidency, down eight percentage points from when the question was first asked. (86)

DOWN 8 POINTS

atheists, agnostics, and members of other non-Christian religions, who comprise about 13 percent of the U.S. population -- While about 75 percent of these respondents approved of President Obama at the start of his term, their approval declined to about 64 percent.

DOWN 11 POINTS

Jews were the religious group third likeliest to approve of President Obama, giving him 61percent approval. This too is a decline: in January-June 2009, their approval rating of the president was 77 percent.

DOWN 16 POINTS

Overall, 48 percent of Americans approve of President Obamas job, down from 63 percent in the first months of his presidency. Gallup claims that its survey of over 276,000 adults claims an overall margin of error of plus or minus one percent.

Catholics, who accounted for about a quarter of the electorate, supported Obama, at 54 percent, over McCain, at 45 percent.

Correction: People who self-identified as Catholics, who accounted for about a quarter of the electorate, supported Obama, at 54 percent, over McCain, at 45 percent, according to unscientific and highly unreliable exit polls.

Evangelicals are clearly the most conservative voters in America, but some percentage of them are naturally going to stray for some reason, but I can hardly find fault with our rock solid block of right wing voters, I only wish that others could come even close to their vote.

Seventy and eighty percent pro-life, conservative voting, is a goal that the rest of conservative Christians should fight to get their churches to equal, I’m sure that Evangelicals could use some help. It sure is better than being a Democrat voting block.

34
posted on 01/23/2012 10:34:15 AM PST
by ansel12
(Romney is unquestionably the weakest party front-runner in contemporary political history.)

Dittos! How do “Catholics” like Sebelius, Pelosi, the Kennedys, Kerry, et al. maintain their standing in the Roman Catholic Church? Why don’t the bishops, cardinals, or others in the heirarchy excommunicate them? I would think the Church would want to rid itself of these people who blatantly flaunt their distaste for what the Church teaches.

Correction Catholics who are so identified by the Pope and the official Catholic Church, voted 54% for Obama.

"The Pope and the official Catholic Church" don't spend their days "identifying" Catholics. They have better things to do. Neither does the Church keep a list of who is and who is not a Catholic nor does it issue a membership card which identifies the carrier as officially Catholic with the Pope's signature and valid stamp.

There's a good reason for that.

It's because being Catholic entails interior assent to certain beliefs and the living out of those beliefs on a daily basis. Obviously, that's something that God can very well keep track of but it's a little difficult for mere mortals.

Individual parishes keep historical records of who was baptized, who was married, who died etc, but you'll appreciate that this is not quite the same thing and it's not a job for "the Pope and the official Catholic Church". The office workers take care of it and says nothing about adherence to those tenets of faith which the Church professes.

She is also the daughter of Ohio Governor John Gilligan who crammed a first time state personal income tax down Ohio's throat in 1971.

According to Wikipedia, her Catholicism is at an end. Raymond Cardinal Burke, who is the Chief Justice of the Signatura (the Vatican's highest court) has publicly instructed Sebelius NOT to approach for receipt of the Holy Eucharist anywhere since she no longer qualifies as Catholic based upon her persistent public sin of support for baby-killing. It is not very likely that she will ever seek forgiveness and she will likely have to do so at the Vatican. Given that she was a close ally of the late Killer Tiller of Wichita, she has a LOT to repent!

So the Vatican is not in any way a source for the number of Catholics?

The number of true Catholics? No.

The term "Catholic" is often used loosely in the media. The Vatican can tell you how many people attended Church on Sunday. It can tell you how many people have been baptized. It can tell you how many people checked the "Catholic" box in the national population census. That's what is usually meant by "Catholic" when statistics are discussed. It's based on self-identification or numbers of people who have had some form of contact with the Church.

What the Vatican can't tell you is how many people actually believe what the Church teaches.

And if one does not believe what the Catholic Church teaches, then one is not a Catholic.

There's nothing unique about that. If you believe in God, then you're not an atheist. If you don't believe in Marx's dogmas, you're not a communist. If you don't believe in Calvin's teachings, you're not a Calvinist. Irrespective of where you plant your posterior on a Sunday or any other day.

Correction Catholics who are so identified by the Pope and the official Catholic Church, voted 54% for Obama.

Unless you can show proof that the self-identified Catholics who respond to exit polls all present officially stamped memberships by the Pope and the Catholic Church, A.A. Cunningham's description is the only accurate one.

I can see how pride and chauvinism blocks we conservatives from being able to enlist even Catholic conservatives in our fight against liberalism.

I think you just said that yes, they are Catholics, and the Pope and the Vatican labels them as such, counts them as such. That is why we have a voter category called Catholic, not super Catholic, or only Catholics approved by John the internet guy, or whatever it takes to eliminate the possibility of measuring the Catholic vote in elections.

Identity pride can trump conservative politics even at conservative political sites evidently.

44
posted on 01/23/2012 1:47:42 PM PST
by ansel12
(Romney is unquestionably the weakest party front-runner in contemporary political history.)

You don’t do politics, track voting patterns, groups, inroads into the Hispanic vote, or the Catholic vote, or which candidate may hurt us with the Evangelical vote, or the female vote, or who may hurt us down ticket, will we get the military vote, etc?

Why would you be at freerepublic if those areas don’t interest you.

47
posted on 01/23/2012 1:57:23 PM PST
by ansel12
(Romney is unquestionably the weakest party front-runner in contemporary political history.)

No. You're smart enough to realize I was making the point that religions are not to be judged by the voting patterns of their self-identified members.

You dont do politics, track voting patterns, groups, inroads into the Hispanic vote, or the Catholic vote, or which candidate may hurt us with the Evangelical vote, or the female vote, or who may hurt us down ticket, will we get the military vote, etc?

Yes. I'm also smart enough to realize that you often try to present the data in ways that make Catholics look as bad as possible. Look, you're not one of the unhinged and crazy anti-Catholics. But even though your anti-Catholicism is subtler than theirs, it doesn't mean it's still not obvious.

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